The man at Kambala (18 page)

`But you can't bring yourself to trust anyone as far again,' she reminded him softly.

`No,' he agreed, 'that's true.' And then on an altered note, 'I almost had myself convinced that I might until I saw your face when Steve put in his unexpected appearance on Saturday night. I was wrong about that too. You are in love with him.'

Her face burned. 'No!'

- 'At least pay me the compliment about being honest about it. I'm not in deep enough to be badly hurt.'

She was silent for a long moment, her throat tight. `All right,' she said huskily at last. 'It's true. I didn't
realize it myself until I saw him again.'

`You did, I think, but you were hiding from it.' His smile was wry. 'If wanting was having we'd all be rich. If it's any consolation, I don't think Diane is going to get him either.'

Sara sat very still. 'No?'

'No. There was a time when I thought she might be prepared to put up with a lot to be Mrs. Steve York, only having seen her reactions to his way of life I'd say that the concessions are going to have to come with him, if at all.'

B
ut he's already considering that place next to yours. Surely ...'

`You mean Jill hopes he's considering it. She's the one who wants him to settle down. Personally, I can't see it happening. He's not the compromising type.'

Sara could agree with that, but found small comfort in the rest. Whether Steve eventually married Diane or not it could make little difference to her own standing in his esteem. No doubt he would be highly relieved when her father finally returned to take over the responsibility he seemed unable to relinquish with a clear conscience himself.

`You're a rather exceptional person, Don,' she said, low-toned. 'I can't think why it isn't you I feel this way about. There are times when I actually hate Steve.'

A smile touched his mouth. 'Probably because you're ,a lot like him. If he had any sense he'd see that you'd make him a perfect partner. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way.'

`No.' There was nothing to add to that.

It was late when they got back. Steve was on the
veranda with Diane, a glass in his hand. He watched the two of them get out of the car and mount the steps unsmilingly, ran a deliberate and jeering eye over Sara's scrap of a sundress and nodded towards an envelope lying on the table by his knee.

`That came in an hour ago.'

Sara had to lean across him to pick the cablegram up. She opened it quickly, smoothing out the folded sheet. When she at last looked up again they were all watching her with varying expressions. Steve asked the obvious question.

`What happened?'

`It's from my father.' Her voice was quiet and unemotional. 'He was married this morning, and intends to stay on in England. He wants me to join him there.'

In the silence which followed the flat announcement, Sara's eyes followed the flight of a swallowtail flitting from blossom to blossom of the jacaranda just below the veranda. She supposed they had butterflies in England, particularly in the country places like Benston. Unspoiled and unchanged, her father had said in his last letter, but unchanged from what? Neat meadows divided by equally neat rows of fencing and cropped by tidy herds of Jersey cows; a stream flowing busily beneath a hump-backed bridge into a village of stone-built cottages with roses round the doors. Sara had seen pictures like that of English villages, and thought how pretty it all looked — and how miniature. How could her father even bear to think about living in such confinement after knowing places like Mara!

Steve took the cable from her unresisting hand, read it through swiftly and looked back at her.

`He says letter already on the way.'

`Yes.' She moved to the nearest chair and sat down, caught Doris eye and made an effort to rationalize her thoughts. 'I wonder if the Department knows yet.'

`If he doesn't intend coming back here at all then I imagine he'll have done something about informing them,' Steve said dryly. 'Would you like me to check?'

`I don't think so. If his resignation hasn't reached them yet it would sound bad coming from you.' Sara still couldn't quite take it in. Kenya was her home. How was she going to leave it all behind? On the other hand, how could she possibly stay under the circumstances? She had no qualifications — none, at least, which could be of any help in finding a job open to women. She had to join her father. There was no other course to take. 'I suppose he'll want me to arrange to have our things cleared out of Kambala and sent on,' she added musingly.

`We'll have to wait and see what he has to say in his letter.' Steve sounded hard and cold. 'No doubt that will contain all your instructions.' He heaved himself to his feet. 'I have to go into town, so I'll call in at the sorting offices and find out if there's anything for you while I'm down there. See you in an hour or so.'

Diane watched him go with a rather odd expression on her face, met her brother's eyes and gave a faint shrug, then spoke to Sara for the first time since she had returned. 'You must stay on here, of course, until everything is settled. Did you have any idea at all that your father might be thinking of doing this?'

`He did mention the woman he's married in one of

his letters a couple of weeks ago,' Sara replied tonelessly. 'She's someone he knew years ago before we came out to East Africa — a widow. It never occurred to me that he would stay there, though.'

`No? Well, some men will always put a woman first.' Diane got up, stretched and looked up at the sky. 'I'd say we're going to get some rain in the next hour. It's to be hoped that Barry has the sense to realize it too. They've taken a picnic into the hills.'

She was proved right some fifteen minutes later when the heavens opened. It was still coming down in a solid sheet when Steve returned from town, and the shoulders of his shirt were drenched in the short dash from car to porch. There were several letters in his hand, the top one of which he handed over to Sara. She looked at the British stamps and the postmark dated five days previously, and was grateful when both Steve and Don disappeared, leaving her to open the envelope and read the letter on her own.

I never imagined that this could happen to me again, her father had written. Or that it could mean more to me than the life I've made for myself out there these last years. Molly would have come with me if I'd asked her, but she would have been making yet another sacrifice and it's high time someone made a few for her. I've always had happy memories of Benston, as you know, and as it isn't too far from Windsor I might even fix myself up with a job in the Safari Park there. Not quite Africa, of course, but an adequate substitute given other compensations. By the time you get this we'll be married. I shall send
you a wire on the day because we both want you to have some share in it. Molly is looking forward to seeing you again after all these years; she always wanted a daughter. There was a little more in the same vein, and then: I have naturally informed the Department that I shan't be returning, and have arranged that the balance of my accrued leave should be taken as notice of termination. With regard to Kambala, you will be able to sort out what we'll want to keep and leave the rest for the new Warden, whoever he might be. It shouldn't take long, and you could probably be on your way here by the end of the month. Perhaps you'd like to come by sea and have a holiday while you're at it. Buy whatever you want for the trip. It's time you started taking an interest in clothes and things like that.

Sara was sitting there with the letter still open in her hand when Steve came back into the room. He had changed his shirt and run a brush over his damp hair, which gleamed like polished teak as it caught a stray beam of sunlight pushing its way valorously through the cloud. He lit a cigarette before speaking, leaning against the wall near the veranda door.

`Well?' he said.

`I'm to take a
sea trip to England and have a
good time,' she told him evenly. 'If there's a plane going out to Mara tomorrow I'd be able to sort things out at Kambala while Bruce Madden is still there. I don't want to intrude on the new man — if they manage to find someone to take over from Bruce at such short notice.'

`They have.' His tone was steady. 'I shall be driving out myself at the weekend. You can come with me then. A few days won't make much difference.'

Sara stared at him, her throat aching. 'You don't waste much time, do you? Is that why you went into town, to make sure no one else pipped you at the post? You needn't have worried. Kambala is a bit too remote for popularity.'

`Stop jumping to conclusions. I've been asked to help out again, that's all. I might take it on long term, I might not. It all depends on how things pan out.. The poaching situation is far too serious in that section to leave the place without a co-ordinator.'

How things panned out, Sara surmised, depended on Diane. The latter would obviously not consider living in so remote a spot as Kambala, but that wasn't to say that she might not eventually come round to considering a rather more favourable proposition. Meanwhile, Steve would sit it out at Kambala. Farming, it appeared, had quite definitely been ruled out. Sara couldn't blame him. After being used to the wide open spaces few men could settle themselves to rural occupations — with her father the possible exception.

`Sorry,' she said. 'I think I'm feeling a bit edgy.'

`Hardly surprising. Think you're going to like England?'

`Why not? My father's there.'

`Revealing true parental devotion.' He held up a hand as she opened her mouth to revile that statement. `All right, so every man has a right to decide his own future. What I am arguing with is his way of doing it, leaving you to do all the clearing up over here.' He

paused, drew on the cigarette, added casually, `Have you thought about staying on in Kenya yourself?' `Doing what?' she asked.

He shrugged. 'You could get a job. The Game Department might help out there.'

`Sitting in an office filling out forms?' She shook her head wryly. `I'd suffocate.'

`There must be other things you could do.'

`I can't think of anything. Anyway . ..' she paused, looked down at her hands folded tightly in her lap .. . `you don't have to feel responsible for me any more. Strictly speaking that ended when I came to Nairobi,'

`Not when it's friends of mine you're staying with. My involvement will end the day you get aboard that ship or plane, or whatever.' He moved abruptly. `We'll leave for Mara on Friday morning. Before that I'll check on available berths towards the month end. That will give you over a week to sort things out at the station. Think it will be long enough?'

Plenty.' She hardly knew what to say. try not to

get in your way.'

His smile was ironical. 'I'm sure you will.' There was the sound of a car outside and he came away from the wall. `That will be Jill.'

It was. She came in laughing and soaked to the skin, Barry having carried on to his own house to change. They had been quite a distance from the car when the rain had started and within seconds had barely been able to see the vehicle through the deluge. Then the car had refused to start and they had been forced to sit there steaming in their wet clothes until the rain let up
enough to allow Barry to take a look under the bonnet.

There was a vast difference in the other girl's whole demeanour, thought Sara, viewing the sparkling eyes and healthily flushed cheeks. She was fast getting over Don, perhaps already quite free of any lingering feelings for the man she had believed herself in love with. Sara only wished she could teach herself to do the same.

THEY left Kambala an hour after dawn on Friday, heading west along the road Sara had taken with Don a few days before. Jill and Don had both got up early to see them off, but Diane didn't bother to put in an appearance until the last moment, emerging from her room in a black and gold kimono-style wrap which suited her slender elegance.

At some time during the week it had been decided that she should accompany Jill down to Mombasa on the afternoon flight, although it was still uncertain as to how long the former intended to stay or what her particular purpose was in going. Privately Sara wondered if she was trying to show Steve that she would not be content to sit around waiting for him
forever
by implying that there were other attractions down at the coast. If that was it she could have gained small satisfaction from Steve's reactions, as he appeared totally unmoved. It was probably a case, thought Sara, of who would break first. Somehow she doubted that it would be Steve. No matter how much he might want Diane he would never allow a woman to dictate terms in that way.

He didn't seem disposed for conversation during the first part of the journey. In no state of mind for idle chat herself, Sara kept her attention on the passing scenery, only too conscious that she was seeing it for the last time. A passage was booked for her on a ship leaving Mombasa in a week's time. On the day before that she was to fly direct from Mara to the port, and spend a night with Jill before embarking. Between then and now stretched a no-man's-land she didn't even want to consider for the moment.

She wondered how Ted had taken the news of his old friend's desertion, and whether he would be staying on under Steve's direction if the latter eventually decided to
keep the job for a while. Kamb
ala had been Ted's home for more than ten years. Sara couldn't see him wanting to pull up roots at this state of his life, yet she knew that Steve had often been impatient of the older man's somewhat happy-go-lucky attitude to life and work. Ted and her father had got along because in many ways they were alike, but it was doubtful that Steve would be willing to put up with the same way of things for very long. He wasn't the kind to allow sentiment to colour his judgment.